2010/09/15

My wife & I live close to Philadelphia, so we often visit. We are slowly developing knowledge of and appreciation for the City of Brother Love on its own terms.

I recently celebrated a birthday and to mark the occasion, my wife provided a helicopter flight to tour the city of Philadelphia in a way I never had. We went up recently and had a blast!

The weather was perfect: low 80s, low humidity and the bluest sky we have seen for weeks. The helicopter, a Robinson R44, offers incredible visibility, as evidenced by this picture.

Over the course of the thirty minutes or so we were in the air, I was struck by how different the city looked from this height. At street level, it can be jarring, noisy…chaotic. But from about 500 feet up, the city is majestic, serene and surprisingly green. It was great to see Philly from this new perspective and my first experience in a helicopter.

Seeing things from a different perspective is important. One of the things I find most rewarding about talking with experts in their field is seeing something I thought I understood from a new perspective. That new perspective yields new insights—and from such exchanges, my understanding grows. So in a very real way, one can say that changing your perspective grows your understanding.

That got me thinking about résumés and the importance of having someone else review them. Many of us were brought up believing that talking about our accomplishments is immodest and not desirable. But given a chance to extol the merits of a colleague, the same people who keep mum about their own achievements can’t stop talking up their co-workers.

It’s this phenomenon that needs to be leveraged. Writing a résumé is not easy for most people, as discussed above. But talking about the great things someone else has done, this generally comes quite easily.

So if you know someone who is having trouble putting together a résumé, offering suggestions on how to make his or her accomplishments stronger might be a great way to help him or her. You will very likely offer a sorely-needed change of perspective.